Notes

Whole human brain processing rate estimated as 1028 FLOPS (or 32 x 1028 bits/sec) [Tuszynski, 2006]. Assumes classical computation on microtubules. Tuszunski explains that each microtubule dimer can have 32 states (four states per dimer, four states per electron inside the tubulin dimer, with at least two computational states), and since there are 13 dimers per ring and 1 250 rings per midsize microtubule, then each microtubule would have 100 kilobytes of information. The known number of microtubules per neuron suggests 109 bytes per neuron, yielding 1019 bytes per brain assuming 1010 neurons per brain. If the electrons oscillate or make transitions in this state on the order of nanoseconds, then the processing power is 1028 FLOPS (or 32 x 1028 bits/sec).